Note: This is a sequel of "Assigned".
Warnings: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Child Soldiers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Triggers, Violence, Dubious Parenting (if you could call Kylo's method of bonding that), Underage Weapon Usage.
Evoked
Red.
Rey did not like it. Because red was bad memories. And bad memories triggered. Finn had a lot of scars; she counted the ones Finn let her see, and guessed the others he had hidden. Finn must have been soaked red with that many wounds.
Kylo told her, when they had their weapon cleaning session in discretion, how Finn almost bled dry underneath Kylo's hands, the stain of blood sometimes seen agleam when the knife he had used to cut Finn open was shifted in just the right way. Irremovable remembrance.
She did not tell Finn how sometimes Kylo stared at that spotless edge in something like reverence, did not tell Finn how it was good that Finn had not died from blood loss and could have left Rey all alone: Curling up small on the bleached-white bed in that dingy motel room when Finn had said it was still unsafe, her palm tight around the stolen gun hidden under the pillow, wondering where had Finn gone?
But if it had happened, then Kylo would have Rey hunt him down to the end of the Earth. Rey had learned enough to sustain survival, enough to acknowledge her fury and pain (despite what Finn said about her being literally baby. You're seven! Finn often exaggerated.). That she grew up meant Kylo's growing old brought her sudden advantageous satisfaction.
For all her ease at Kylo's silent acceptance and the time spent down at the armory, communicating with Kylo through the clicks and clacks of assembled and disassembled parts, putting dangers (protections) into shapes; she had always liked the sturdiness of Finn's warmth better.
Holding hands.
Hands for holding. How strange. With Finn's bigger, brown one gently wrapping around hers. But Finn showed her it was nice (what is nice), was safe (strange too). And he indulged her when she tested it and led Finn to places; did not even ask for her understanding - because she did not really understand this. Because Finn knew she still observed, and it would take time for her to be open to learning such a thing.
Finn never wavered from her.
But when Finn stumbled home from his walk, his clothes rather dirty and disheveled, Rey stopped reading her Deep in the Woods to look at Finn. Startled that he had gotten her attention, Finn loosened his stance as if urging her not to be alarmed, and shifted so that the sunlight filtering through the glass front doors backlit Finn's figure in shadow; but Rey knew the smell of blood from memories.
"It's fine, Rey. Just a bad fall," Finn assured – must have seen the minute flair of her little nostrils –, his body still casted away. Unseen of red. "There was that pothole I didn't see while hopping over a particular large stump. Lucky I didn't get my ankle sprained, but somehow I was next rolling down a bad slope, and ended up with my hands torn up a little. It's nothing to worry about!"
Finn tended to ramble when he was nervous. Such a bad tell. Back in the Order, unnecessary stuttering would have gotten Rey return to her room bruised. But Rey had always been careful, had not wanted to be that one kid who disobeyed and then struggled to sobs through his broken, bloody -
Frozen in her spot, Rey stared at Finn, at his fuzzy features and the tang of copper wrapping around him.
"Rey?" Finn called, sounding worried, and intended to step close; but Rey found breaths stuck in her lungs, flashes of something terrible making it hard to focus. She blinked, and there was Kylo standing at Finn' side without her notice, grasping Finn biceps to hold back his advance.
"Kylo?" Rey heard Finn question in near confusion, but all she could see was Kylo's gesturing upstairs, and she fled as told.
Rey lay utterly still on her bed, blanket drawn tight when Finn opened the door to her room. But he did not approach, just standing there watching her with eyes so gentle and concerned Rey would never feel uneasy regarded under. Finn had cleaned up, so he no longer smelt of - injury. But Rey remembered the faint stench of it still.
She wanted to go to Finn, but the baser part of hers cowered under the recollection of fear. It put her paralyzed between starvation and dread, shaking her tiny form. And Finn was quickly seen kneeling at her bedside, but even when she whimpered low and lost - cocooned away from him, he did not touch her.
"Breathe," Finn said, firm like wood and warm as its brown. "Breathe with me, Rey. In. Out. In. Out. You can do it. That's right. That's right. We'll do it together."
Her short wheezes slowly smoothed to Finn's tender, but clear guiding. Rey listened to Finn talk, trying to find back her normal breathing. She did not know how much time had passed, but as she rolled awake from drowsiness, her room was shrouded in the gloom of early dark; the breaths of another presence were apparent in the current stillness. Finn, she called in her mind.
The figure of Finn shifted against the bed, and as if being beckoned, Rey crawled across the sheet until her nose pressed into the yielding curl of Finn's board shoulder. Sniff. Sniff. Smelling warm from the burn of the sun and the salty crispness of the sand beach just some miles from the backdune woods Kylo let them reside in.
After a brief minute of hesitation, maybe unsure whether Rey would recoil from his touch, Finn ran his fingers through her hair tangled in her struggling. Rey exhaled a sound small and relieved, burrowing close into both her blanket and Finn's patient affection. Good and safe.
"I'm sorry," Finn said softly, sorrowfully, but his ministration was protective in its tenderness.
Kylo found them curling around each other like that, and ushered them out of their misery. Obediently, they followed after the threateningly broody loom of his back like confused ducklings. The air greeting them was cool when Finn brought Rey outside on the front deck, cradling her to his chests. The pines murmured to the rustling of their own branches and leaves; sometimes, Rey caught the creaking of their trunks amidst the gentle trill of insects - cracking like a distantly fired gun. If Rey listened really closely, she might hear the intermittent lapping of the sea, bubbles glistening under the stars as waves after waves crashed ashore.
Finn took a deep inhalation and whispered to her stories of animals' waiting till nighttime to scavenge, searching the shoreline for food; of how startlingly different it was when moving out of the shaded embrace of the forest into those open dunes at the coast, intense with heat and sunlight. Lulled by Finn's telling, she rested her head in his hold; somewhere Kylo stalked into the dark among the trees, as silent and cunning as the foxes Finn told.
Memories diminished to the back of her mind, retreating like the waves undulating to the pull of the moon. In the night, Rey did not quite remember the color.